CHAPTER XIX. THE CITY THAT WAS ALIVE
Close beside us was one of the cyclopean columns. We crept to it;crouched at its base opposite the drift of the Metal People; strove,huddled there, to regain our shaken poise. Like bagatelles we felt inthat tremendous place, the weird luminaries gleaming above like garlandsof frozen suns, the enigmatic hosts of animate cubes and spheres andpyramids trooping past.
They ranged in size from shapes yard-high to giants of thirty feet ormore. They paid no heed to us, did not stop; streaming on, engrossed inwhatever mysterious business was summoning them. And after a time theirnumbers lessened; thinned down to widely separate groups, to stragglers;then ceased. The hall was empty of them.
As far as the eye could reach the columned spaces stretched. I wasconscious once more of that unusual flow of energy through every veinand nerve.
"Follow the crowd!" said Drake. "Do you feel just full of pep andginger, by the way?"
"I am aware of the most extraordinary vigor," I answered.
"Some weird joint," he mused, looking about him. "Wonder if they haveany windows? This whole place looked solid to me--what I could see ofit. Wonder if we'll get up against it for air? These Things don't needit, that's sure. Wonder--"
He broke off staring fascinatedly at the pillar behind us.
"Look here, Goodwin!" There was a tremor in his voice. "What do you makeof THIS?"
I followed his pointing finger; looked at him inquiringly.
"The eyes!" he said impatiently. "Don't you see them? The eyes in thecolumn!"
And now I saw them. The pillar was a pale metallic blue, in color atrifle darker than the Metal Folk. All within it were the myriads oftiny crystalline points that we had grown to know were the receptorsof some strange sense of sight. But they did not sparkle as did thoseothers; they were dull, lifeless. I touched the surface. It was smooth,cool--with none of that subtle, warm vitality that pulsed through allthe Things with which I had come in contact. I shook my head, realizingas I did so what a shock the incredible possibility he had suggested hadgiven me.
"No," I said. "There is a resemblance, yes. But there is no force aboutthis--stuff; no life. Besides, such a thing is utterly incredible."
"They might be--dormant," he suggested stubbornly. "Can you see any markof their joining--if they ARE the cubes?"
Together we scanned the pillar minutely. The faces seemed unbroken,continuous; there was no trace of those thin and shining lines thatmarked the juncture of the cubes when they had clicked together to formthe bridge of the abyss or that had gleamed, crosslike, upon the back ofthe combined four upon which we had followed Norhala.
"It's a sheer impossibility. It's madness to think such a thing, Drake!"I exclaimed, and wondered at my own vehemence of denial.
"Maybe," he shook his head doubtfully. "Maybe--but--well--let's be onour way."
We strode on, following the direction the Metal Folk had gone. ClearlyDrake was still doubtful; at each pillar he hesitated, scanning itclosely with troubled eyes.
But I, having determinedly dismissed the idea, was more interestedin the fantastic lights that flooded this columned hall with theirbuttercup radiance. They were still and unwinking; not disks, I couldsee now, but globes. Great and small, they floated motionless, theirrays extending rigidly and as still as the orb that shed them.
Yet rigid as they were there was nothing about either rays or orbs thatsuggested either hardness or the metallic. They were vaporous, soft asSt. Elmo's fire, the witch lights that cling at times to the spars ofships, weird gleaming visitors from the invisible ocean of atmosphericelectricity.
When they disappeared, as they did frequently, it was instantaneously,completely, with a disconcerting sleight-of-hand finality. I noted,though, that when they did vanish, immediately close to where theyhad been other orbs swam forth with that same astonishing abruptness;sometimes only one, larger it might be than that which had gone;sometimes a cluster of smaller globes, their frozen, crocused raysimpinging.
What could they be, I wondered--how fixed, and what the source oftheir light? Products of electro-magnetic currents and born of theinterpenetration of such streams flowing above us? Such a theory mightaccount for their disappearance, and reappearance, shiftings of theflows that changed the light producing points of contact. Wirelesslights? If so here was an idea that human science might elaborate ifever we returned to--
"Now which way?" Drake broke in upon my musing. The hall had ended. Westood before a blank wall vanishing into the soft mists hiding the roofof the chamber.
"I thought we had been going along the way They went," I said inamazement.
"So did I," he answered. "We must have circled. They never went throughTHAT unless--unless--" He hesitated.
"Unless what?" I asked sharply.
"Unless it opened and let them through," he said. "Have you forgottenthose great ovals--like cat's eyes that opened in the outer walls?" headded quietly.
I HAD forgotten. I looked again at the wall. Certainly it was smooth,lineless. In one unbroken, shining surface it rose, a facade of polishedmetal. Within it the deep set points of light were duller even than theyhad been in the pillars; almost indeed indistinguishable.
"Go on to the left," I said none too patiently. "And get that absurdnotion out of your head."
"All right." He flushed. "But you don't think I'm afraid, do you?"
"If what you're thinking were true, you'd have a right to be," I repliedtartly. "And I want to tell you I'D be afraid. Damned afraid."
For perhaps two hundred paces we skirted the base of the wall. We cameabruptly to an opening, an oblong passageway fully fifty foot wide bytwice as high. At its entrance the mellow, saffron light was cut off asthough by an invisible screen. The tunnel itself was filled with a dimgrayish blue luster. For an instant we contemplated it.
"I wouldn't care to be caught in there by any rush," I hesitated.
"There's not much good in thinking of that now," said Drake, grimly."A few chances more or less in a joint of this kind is nothing betweenfriends, Goodwin; take it from me. Come on."
We entered. Walls, floor and roof were composed of the same substance asthe great pillars, the wall of the outer chamber; filled like them withdimmed replicas of the twinkling eye points.
"Odd that all the places in here are square," muttered Drake. "Theydon't seem to have used any spherical or pyramidal ideas in theirbuilding--if it is a building."
It was true. All was mathematically straight up and down and across. Itwas strange--still we had seen little as yet.
There was a warmth about this passageway we trod; a difference in theair of it. The warmth grew, a dry and baking heat; but stimulativerather than oppressive. I touched the walls; the warmth did not comefrom them. And there was no wind. Yet as we went on the heat increased.
The passageway turned at a right angle, continuing in a corridorhalf its former dimensions. Far away shone a high bar of pale yellowradiance, rising like a pillar of light from floor to roof. Toward it,perforce, we trudged. Its brilliancy grew greater.
A few paces away from it we stopped. The yellow luminescence streamedthrough a slit not more than a foot wide in the wall. We were in acul-de-sac for the opening was not wide enough for either Drake or meto push through. Through it with the light gushed the curious heatenveloping us.
Drake walked to the opening, peered through. I joined him.
At first all that I could see was a space filled with the saffronlambency. Then I saw that this was splashed with tiny flashes of thejewel fires; little lances and javelin thrusts of burning emeralds andrubies; darting gem hard flames rose scarlet and pale sapphire; quickflares of violet.
Into my sight through the irised, crocus mist swam the radiant body ofNorhala!
She stood naked, clad only in the veils of her hair that glowed nowlike spun silk of molten copper, her strange eyes wide and smiling, thegalaxies of tiny stars sparkling through their gray depths.
And all about her swirled a countless host of
the Little Things!
From them came the gem fires piercing the aureate mists. They playedand frolicked about her in scores of swiftly forming, swiftly changing,goblin shapes. They circled her feet in shining, elfin rings; thenopening into flaming disks and stars, shot up and spun about the whitemiracle of her body in great girdles of multi-colored living fires.Mingled with disk and star were tiny crosses gleaming with sullen, deepcrimsons and smoky orange.
A flash of blue incandescence and a slender pillared shape leaped fromthe floor; became a coronet, a whirling, flashing halo toward whichstreamed up the flaming tendrilings of her tresses. Other halos circledher arms and breasts; they spun like bracelets about the outstretchedarms.
Then like a swiftly rushing wave a host of the Little Things thrustthemselves up, covered her, hid her in a coruscating cloud.
I saw an exquisite arm thrust itself from their clinging, wave gaily;saw her glorious head emerge from the incredible, the seething draperiesof living jewels. I heard her laughter, sweet and golden and far away.
Goddess of the Inexplicable! Madonna of the Metal Babes!
The Nursery of the Metal People!
Norhala was gone, blotted out from our sight! Gone too were the bar oflight and the chamber into which we had been peering. We stared at asmooth, blank wall. With that same ensorcelled swiftness the wall hadclosed even as we had stared through it; closed so quickly that we hadnot seen its motion.
I gripped Drake; shrank with him into the farthest corner--for on theother side of us the wall was opening. First it was only a crack; thenrapidly it widened. There stretched another passageway, luminous andlong; far down it we glimpsed movement. Closer that movement came,grew plainer. Out of the mistily luminous distances, three abreast andfilling the corridor from side to side, raced upon us a company of thegreat spheres!
Back we cowered from their approach--back and back; arms outstretched,pressing against the barrier, flattening ourselves against the shock ofthe destroying impact menacing.
"It's all up," muttered Drake. "No place to run. They're bound to smashus. Stick close, Doc. Get back to Ruth. Maybe I can stop them!"
Before I could check him, he had leaped straight in the path of therushing globes, now a scant twoscore yards away.
The globes stopped--halted a few feet from him. They seemed tocontemplate us, astonished. They turned upon themselves, as thoughconsulting. Slowly they advanced. We were pushed forward and liftedgently. Then as we hung suspended, held by that force which always I canliken only to myriads of tiny invisible hands, the shining arcs of theirbacks undulated beneath us.
Their files swung around the corner and marched down the passage bywhich we had come from the immense hall. And when the last rank hadpassed from under us we were dropped softly to our feet; stood swayingin their wake.
A curious frenzy of helpless indignation shook me, a rage of humiliationobscuring all gratitude I should have felt for our escape. Drake's eyesblazed wrath.
"The insolent devils!" He raised clenched fists. "The insolent,domineering devils!"
We stared after them.
Was the passage growing narrower--closing? Even as I gazed I saw itshrink; saw its walls slide silently toward each other. I pushed Drakeinto the newly opened way and sprang after him.
Behind us was an unbroken wall covering all that space in which but amoment before we had stood!
Is it to be wondered that a panic seized us; that we began to runcrazily down the alley that still lay open before us, casting overour shoulders quick, fearful glances to see whether that inexorable,dreadful closing was continuing, threatening to crush us between thesewalls like flies in a vise of steel?
But they did not close. Unbroken, silent, the way stretched before usand behind us. At last, gasping, avoiding each other's gaze, we paused.
And at that very moment of pause a deeper tremor shook me, a tremblingof the very foundations of life, the shuddering of one who faces theinconceivable knowing at last that the inconceivable--IS.
For, abruptly, walls and floor and roof broke forth into countlesstwinklings!
As though a film had been withdrawn from them, as though they hadawakened from slumber, myriads of little points of light shone forthupon us from the pale-blue surfaces--lights that considered us, measuredus--mocked us.
The little points of living light that were the eyes of the MetalPeople!
This was no corridor cut through inert matter by mechanic art; itsopening had been caused by no hidden mechanisms! It was a livingThing--walled and floored and roofed by the living bodies--of the MetalPeople themselves.
Its opening, as had been the closing of that other passage, was theconscious, coordinate and voluntary action of the Things that formedthese mighty walls.
An action that obeyed, was directed by, the incredibly gigantic,communistic will which, like the spirit of the hive, the soul of theformicary, animated every unit of them.
A greater realization swept us. If THIS were true, then those pillars inthe vast hall, its towering walls--all this City was one living Thing!
Built of the animate bodies of countless millions! Tons upon countlesstons of them shaping a gigantic pile of which every atom was sentient,mobile--intelligent!
A Metal Monster!
Now I knew why it was that its frowning facade had seemed to watch usArgus-eyed as the Things had tossed us toward it. It HAD watched us!
That flood of watchfulness pulsing about us had been actualconcentration of regard of untold billions of tiny eyes of the livingblock which formed the City's cliff.
A City that Saw! A City that was Alive!
No secret mechanism then--back darted my mind to that first terror--hadclosed the wall, shutting from our sight Norhala at play with the LittleThings. None had opened the way for, had closed the way behind, thecoursing spheres. It had been done by the conscious action of theconscious Things of whose living bodies was built this whole tremendousthinking pile!
I think that for a moment we both went a little mad as that staggeringtruth came to us. I know we started to run once more, side by side,gripping like frightened children each other's hands. Then Drakestopped.
"By all the HELL of this place," he said, solemnly, "I'll run no more.After all--we're men. If they kill us, they kill us. But by the God whomade me I'll run from them no more. I'll die standing."
His courage steadied me. Defiantly we marched on. Up from below us, downfrom the roof, out from the walls of our way the hosts of eyes gleamedand twinkled upon us.
"Who could have believed it?" he muttered, half to himself. "A livingcity of them! A living nest of them; a prodigious living nest of metal!"
"A nest?" I caught the word. What did it suggest? That was it--the nestof the army ants, the city of the army ants, that Beebe had studied inthe South American jungles and once described to me. After all, was thismore wonderful, more unbelievable than that--the city of ants which wasformed by their living bodies precisely as this was of the bodies of theCubes?
How had Beebe * phrased it--"the home, the nest, the hearth, the nursery,the bridal suite, the kitchen, the bed and board of the army ants."Built of and occupied by those blind and deaf and savage little insectswhich by the guidance of smell alone carried on the most intricateoperations, the most complex activities. Nothing here was stranger thanthat, I reflected--if once one could rid the mind of the paralyzinginfluence of the shapes of the Metal Things. Whence came the stimulithat moved THEM, the stimuli to which THEY reacted?
* William Beebe, Atlantic Monthly, October, 1919.
Well then--whence and how came the orders to which the ANTS responded;that bade them open THIS corridor in their nest, close THAT, form thischamber, fill that one? Was one more mysterious than the other?
Breaking into my current of thoughts came consciousness that I wasmoving with increased speed; that my body was fast growing lighter.
Simultaneously with this recognition I felt myself lifted from thefloor of the corridor and levitated with considerable r
apidity forward;looking down I saw that floor several feet below me. Drake's arm wounditself around my shoulder.
"Closing up behind us," he muttered. "They're putting us--out."
It was, indeed, as though the passageway had wearied of our deliberateprogress. Had decided to--give us a lift. Rearward it was shutting. Inoted with interest how accurately this motion kept pace with our ownspeed, and how fluidly the walls seemed to run together.
Our movement became accelerated. It was as though we floated buoyantly,weightless, upon some swift stream. The sensation was curiouslypleasant, languorous--what was that word Ruth had used?--ELEMENTAL--andfree. The supporting force seemed to flow equally from walls andfloor; to reach down to us from the roof. It was slumberously even, andeffortless. I saw that in advance of us the living corridor was openingeven as behind us it was closing.
All around us the little eye points twinkled and--laughed.
There was no danger here--there could be none. Deeper and deeper droppedmy mind into the depths of that alien tranquillity. Faster and faster wefloated--onward.
Abruptly, ahead of us shone a blaze of daylight. We passed into it. Theforce holding us withdrew its grip; I felt solidity beneath my feet;stood and leaned back against a smooth wall.
The corridor had ended and--had shut us out from itself.
"Bounced!" exclaimed Drake.
And incongruous, flippant, colloquial as was that word, I know none thatwould better describe my own feelings.
We were BOUNCED out upon a turret jutting from the barrier. And beforeus lay spread the most amazing, the most extraordinary fantastic sceneupon which, I think, the vision of man has rested since the advent oftime.